THE DEFENCE OF THE TRUTH
By D. M. PANTON, B.A.
To identify oneself with the truth
is to plant oneself in the heart of a storm out of which there is no escape for
life. And why this is so our Lord’s experience
illuminatingly shows. "For Christ also pleased not
himself: but, as it is written, the reproaches of them that reproached thee
fell upon me" (Rom. 15: 3). Every word that Christ uttered was a word of
God; He embodied every truth of Jehovah; so that, if His actions were
obnoxious, it was God, who commanded them, who was responsible, and therefore
culpable: yet the Lord’s critics scrupulously avoided all reproach of Jehovah,
entirely absolving Him, while they poured their venom on Christ.
Our
experience will be identical. For
example, he who obeys the Sermon on the Mount falls under the sharpest censure,
and not least from fellow-Christians:
yet He who gave the Sermon, and who, if, obedience to it is evil, is infinitely
the more culpable, is in the same breath lauded as incomparable. The reproaches that are His due fall on me. And
this storm can only deepen. For the
days rapidly approach when the Organizations of the Godless will abandon
oblique attack, and murder the people of the Book because they would murder its
Author.* There has never been a martyr, and there
never will be one, of whom it cannot be said that it was the truth which cost
him his life.
[* "No Book,"
says Bezbozuik,
the
THE TRUTH
We
ponder what is the Truth which has thus been deposited in our
hands. Every utterance that
corresponds with fact is a truth; but the truth is a series of statements made by God Himself
which disclose the realities of life and death, our destiny here and hereafter,
beyond the power of man to discover and all centring in the drama between
Bethlehem and Calvary, with its dawn in Genesis and its meridian in the
Apocalypse. The Bible is a lifebelt
thrown by God to a drowning world. The
value of this disclosure is utterly beyond price. Infinity shades away from every sentence a man
utters, leaving infinite uncertainty; but when God speaks, the sentence is
concrete truth, a verbal statement of exact fact, a thought so finally true
that all action, all life, can safely be built upon it. Therefore Jude says: "Contend
earnestly for the faith once for all delivered unto the saints" (Jude 3). That
is, the Faith has been once given, once for all, once for ever; not discovered,
or invented, or evolved, but delivered; a written revelation, bodily deposited, that has
survived all error, all corruption, all apostasy; so as to admit of elucidation
and explanation, but never of addition, or doubt. New discoveries in the Faith are always
possible; just as telescopes, grown more powerful in the hands of astronomers
themselves grown more skilful, will disclose new worlds hitherto invisible; but those worlds were always there.
An astronomer can discover a
new star, even a star of the first magnitude, but he cannot create one: so the
constellation of truth, overarching us, is the identical constellation,
unaltered and undimmed, on which the Apostles gazed.* Therefore the Apostle says:- "Hold fast the FORM of sound words" - the Scriptures
exactly as they have been penned (2 Tim. 2: 13).
[* Thus, as pre-dating all, what is delivered to us
is not Roman tradition, or Anglican, or Baptist, or Brethren, or Salvation
Army, or Presbyterian, or Congregational, or Quaker, but apostolic (2 Thess. 2: 25); nor the
tradition of new groups now silently rising, to emphasize some aspect of the
truth or embody some new error: for
what is true in these traditions we already have in the Scriptures, and what is erroneous we do not want. The wise disciple holds himself free to spread
the whole counsel of God - "the
Faith," Bible-wide, world-inclusive, Church-whole.]
SHOCK
Now
apart from love and loyalty, which make us spring into the breach in defence of
the truth, there are two vital reasons which make our being in the thick of the
storm not only loyalty but profound wisdom; and the first is that shock at
error, or its absence, is a sure diagnosis of the soul. The man who has lost ‘shock’ at a sin is
already halfway to committing it; and that the
amazing unbelief of the Churches, with - which fifty years ago all England
would have rung, now raises, even in evangelical circles, little more than a
languid interest, is itself a death-symptom. Germs of disruption and decay lodge in all
believers and in all churches exactly as deadly microbes lodge in the
healthiest of us all; and as only strong, full-pulsing heart’s-blood holds
death at bay, so cessation of shock is death begun. For example, a constant danger to us who study
prophecy is a comfortable, easy-going, placid acquiescence in the fearful
apostasies and wickedness’s drawing daily nearer because we know that, as
infallibly foretold, they are inevitable; whereas our whole soul ought to be
one burning protest and revolt. So with the whole range of truth: if we are not
in the trenches where the shells fall, we must either be in hospital, or else
interned behind the enemy’s lines - captured.
COHERENT TRUTH
The
second fact of an importance incalculable is that as all truth is a coherent
whole, a concrete, deposited unity, its mutilation is most dangerous both for
ourselves, and for others to whom we are responsible to pass it on. Error can be a very deadly thing. Leave out one word from a statement, and it
can become a gross error; put only one figure wrong in a sum, and the total is
a falsehood; change one ingredient in a compound, and, instead of a healing
draught it can become a deadly poison, or a violent explosive. "Carlyle was
right," as Dr. H. Townsend
has just said, "in saying that the Church of the
fourth century was split on a diphthong: we are right in answering that Athanasius stood
for that which there would be no Church to split." One of the tragedies of the
TRUTH UNSOLD
So
then we reach the grand climax, uttered in the words of Solomon:- "Buy the truth, AND SELL
IT NOT" (Prov. 23: 23). We
have all found the purchase of the truth a costly thing: it can be not less
costly to retain it. The Truth can alienate friends, ruin reputation,
forfeit employment, jeopardize life, all of which can
often be retained by parting with the truth. But its value is too great. Quite literally, it outweighs all the gold in
all the banks of all the world.
CONTROVERSY
But
our conduct of its defence is only less important than the truth itself. When Abraham
Lincoln was standing for the American presidency, he was asked what he
thought of his prospects. "I do not fear
Breckinridge," he replied, "for the
North is against him; nor Douglas, for he is opposed by the South: there is one
man whose name I see in the papers whom I do fear, and if I am defeated it will
be by him: his name is Abraham Lincoln." Some points are crucial. (1)
Balance in presenting the truth is deeply influential in winning its
acceptance. "Let us prophesy" - for it was a rule even for an
inspired prophet - "according to THE PROPORTION
of the faith" (
-------
God hides Himself so wondrously,
As though there were no God:
He is least seen when all the
powers
Of ill are most abroad.
Thrice blest is he to whom is
given
The instinct that can tell
That God is on the field when He
Is most
invisible.
For right is right, since God is
God
And right the day must win:
To doubt would be disloyalty,
To falter would be sin.
-------